Virtual universes or virtual worlds are computer-based simulated environments intended for its users or residents to inhabit and interact via avatars, which are personas or representations of the users of the virtual universes and generally take the form of two-dimensional or three-dimensional human or fantastical representations of a person's self. These types of virtual universes are now most common in massively multiplayer online games, such as Second Life®, which is a trademark of Linden Research Inc. in the United States. Avatars in these types of virtual universes, which can number well over a million, have a wide range of business and social experiences.
Many regions within a virtual universe contain complex environments with large numbers of objects. Prior art virtual universes only cache items worn by or attached to an avatar, or those items within a predefined proximity. Therefore, a user may experience delays when traversing regions, as objects are downloaded upon entrance or while in transit to a region.
In the prior art, after an avatar enters a region, all items surrounding the avatar must be downloaded from a server. The time to display an object varies by the size of the object and is constrained by download speed to the virtual universe client, resulting in potentially delayed rendering of objects. Since, in most cases an avatar may only interact with objects that are located within a predefined proximity, prior-art caching mechanisms begin to download objects to the local cache only after the avatar enters a region.
However, caching or pre-fetching objects by proximity does not provide an optimal experience for most users. It is common for an avatar to be first presented with objects that are not the user's primary interest. The user must wait while objects of limited interest are retrieved, cached, and processed before the region is rendered.